Coming to America

Puritans, Prostitutes Pennsylvanians, and

Progress

Reasons for Migration

An English joint-stock company started by London entrepreneurs

Joint-stock company – Business venture in which multiple investors share financial interest and liability. Started for the purpose of sharing the risk of overseas trading.

Secured a charter for colonizing land on America’s Eastern shore

Virginia Company

Jamestown Settlement

• Settled as a chartered joint-stock venture in 1607 by the Virginia Company of London

• First permanent British colony in America

• Names James Town after King James I of England who granted the charter

The Problem of JamestownLargely gentlemen (no women)Wanted adventureLooking for gold and fameLimited skills for survival

Leadership was ineffectivePeople began to starveAnger mounted

What saved Jamestown?

The Puritans• Arrived at Plymouth, Mass

in 1630• Led by John Winthrop

– “City upon a hill”• Religion

– Strict Calvinism– Predestination

• Priesthood of all believers– Increase Mather– Cotton Mather– Alan Mather?

Things Fall Apart

• Puritan intolerance leads to expulsions:– Anne Hutchinson 1637

moved to Rhode Island– Believed sinners could

still get salvation and that women were not cursed due to gender

– Gained sanctuary in Roger Williams’ Rhode Island

• Puritan ideology faced difficult competition

• Emergence of cities placed emphasis on commerce and “vice”

• Many younger Puritans moved to cities—found pleasure in gambling, drinking, and sex…oh my!

Pleasure as a reason for migration

• Prostitution flourished in colonial cities. John Adams would have counted over 3 dozen “bawdy houses” within walking distance of his Philadelphia home

• Taverns were commonplace in colonial cities. Lower and middle classes of all races found spirits, dancing, interracial mingling, sex, and gambling in 18th century bars

Source: Thaddeus Russell, A Renegade History of the United States

William Penn

A leading defender of religious toleration in England

Imprisoned six times for speaking out against religious intolerance

While in prison, he wrote numerous pamphlets about Quaker ideology and attacking intolerance

One of his criminal cases helped secure the right to trial by jury

Settlement of Pennsylvania

• Charter granted to William Penn in 1681 from King Charles II in payment of a debt

• Penn asks for the land as a refuge for Quakers

• Quakers, or Society of Friends, were persecuted harshly by the English crown and throughout Europe

Pennsylvania was settled on the Quaker principles of complete freedom of conscience, religious tolerance, and peace (especially with Native tribes)

Frame of Government, Pennsylvania’s written constitution, limited the power of government and guaranteed many fundamental liberties

Frame of Government

“In America there are fertile lands sufficient to subsist all the useless Poor in England, and distressed Protestants in Europe”

James OglethorpeSoldier; Philanthropist;

Founder of Georgia

English Debtors Prison

Settlement of Georgia

• Chartered in 1732 by a group of trustees led by James Oglethorpe

• Founded as a colony for jailed debtors, criminals, and political prisoners from England

Settlement of Georgia

• King George was not a philanthropist like Oglethorpe

• He wanted a buffer between Spanish Florida and the Carolina colony